Jean Rivier

Jean Rivier (21 July 1896 – 6 November 1987)[1] was a French composer of classical music.

He composed over two hundred works, including music for orchestra, chamber groups, chorus, piano, and solo instruments. He served as Professor of Composition at the Paris Conservatory from 1948 until his retirement in 1966. During the period 1948-1962 he shared this position with famous composer Darius Milhaud. Gareth Walters, Pedro Ipuche Riva, and Gerd Boder were three of his students.

Quote from Tadlock's dissertation on Rivier

"Jean Rivier (1896-1987), a twentieth-century French composer of the neo-classical school, is remembered primarily for his flute compositions. However, this prolific composer was extremely active in French musical circles from the period after World War I until his death. He composed over two hundred works, including symphonies, chamber music, concertos, choral music, piano works, music for solo instruments, and accompanied songs. For fourteen years, he shared with Darius Milhaud a position as Professor of Composition at the Paris Conservatory, and continued as sole professor from 1962 until his retirement in 1966. Rivier was a founding member of Triton, a musical society that promoted new music, and he was associated extensively with the French Radio (ORTF). Despite his successful career, Rivier's music was often eclipsed by the increasingly avant-garde compositions of more progressive French composers.
Rivier's songs are best represented by his twenty-nine published melodies or poemes, notable for their brevity, attention to detail, and their lyrical melodies, tonal harmonies with creative dissonances, and carefully structured forms (especially ABA forms). With music set to poems by Guillaume Apollinaire, Henri Mahaut, Arthur Rimbaud, Pierre de Ronsard, Clément Marot, Joachim du Bellay, Rene Chalupt, and Paul Gilson, the songs are characterized by quartal and quintal harmonies, modality, polychords, parallelism, contrasting moods, and expressive emotions." -- David Michael Tadlock, The published songs of Jean Rivier (dissertation)

Compositions

His complete piano works have been published in one volume by Salabert.

Discography

References

  1. ↑ "Linked Authority File". Retrieved March 29, 2011.
  2. ↑ Copyright Alphonse Leduc 1920

External links

Further reading

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